Jury of Peers

by Troy L Brodsky

  Finn and Tonic ignored them… all but one. His hair was even shorter now and his body showed the benefit of a year of weightlifting and real food. Saul moved with a grace and confidence that looked good on him. Ray joined them at the fence.

  “Looks better than last time,” Finn observed.

  “Last time I thought he was gonna be a corpse.”

  “Did that gal really quit her job at the hospital,” Ray asked.

  "Gone with the wind," Tonic confirmed. "No one's heard from her, nary a peep."

  Finn hung his head, rubbing his neck. "She resigned the week after Meek gave us the slip." That they'd watched Seth crawl into a city cab about sixty seconds before the Men in Black appeared was something that Ray just didn't need to know. "I'm not sure that anyone knows what to charge him for yet though."

  Ray had explained all of this in his book, and nodded in agreement. Kidnapping and assault were the least slippery of the charges but murder was fairly twitchy in the eyes of the D.A. Beyond that, he had violated the TOS of a dozen online file sharing sites, but that meant nothing. The NSA issues, however, were very difficult indeed. Ray had been confronted directly, indirectly and frequently by government officials who were very concerned about what Seth Meek might have revealed during his time in the basement. They had encouraged him to soberly consider the ramifications of implying that there had been a breach of national security at Fort Meade. Ray had astutely agreed that this was the case, but he knew that for the NSA to overtly pursue Meek would draw attention to an organization that did not like attention. In the end, the government types that Ray had interviewed, on and off of the record, all seemed rather relieved that Seth was just...gone. Of course, he was still a wanted man and the government of the United States was good at finding people, but they had to want to find him. Probably, they'd wait until this all quieted down, until Meek dropped his guard, and then the game would be up. Maybe. He smiled, thinking of the ease with which Seth had walked away from something that the entire world had seen.

  They all watched in silence for a few minutes, content to listen to the wind in the leaves and the laughing on the court. It was a beautiful day, wide open and timeless. And it wasn’t often that the detectives had the time to enjoy true irony in their line of work so they were in no hurry for it to end.

  They stayed until a buzzer sounded from across the field. The game ended with a final shot, and the kids began to file off of the court. “Here ya go Grandma,” the lanky kid said and tossed the ball back to Tonic.

  Saul was near the end of the crowd trying to squeeze back through the gate, and Ray waited until they were just inches apart. "Hello Saul.”

  Their eyes met but it took several seconds before the recognition dawned, “Mr. Ray.”

  “I’ve got something to show you,” Ray said. “Have a second?”

  “Sure do,” the kid said. He was still staring at Ray as if he were a figment of a long–forgotten dream. They shared a handshake, no doubt reliving the bond of veterans long after the war.

  Finn and Tonic stayed at the fence as the two sat down. Ray began to explain, spreading the letter out on the table with both hands. As the executor of Seth’s trust fund, he’d be having these meetings more often now.

  “Think he’ll make it?” Finn asked.

  “Prolly. I mean, bein’ outside of the city will help right? All he’s gotta do is keep his nose clean until he’s eighteen and he gets to go to college for free. And until then his family isn’t going without. Nice place to live, good schools. He’s got good reason to make it.”

  “I meant Meek.” Finn smiled.

  Tonic shrugged. "Seems like he’s doin’ alright so far.”

  About the Author

  Troy Brodsky spent a decade as a teacher in a juvenile corrections facility for gang kids struggling with substance abuse. He now lives in Nebraska with his family, creates photographs for a living, and feels somewhat twitchy about writing of himself in the third person.

  (And if you've made it this far, you may as well come on over to the Jury of Peers Facebook page and add your two cents… I may be guilty or innocent, but I'd like to hear what you think. Thanks for taking this journey with me–there's more to come.)

  Acknowledgements

  I have a thank you reserved for Mr. Theron Raines (an agent of Forest Gump and Die Hard fame) who took time out of his life to call me one evening out of the blue, make me spill my drink, proceed to brutally critique my work, and then tell me that I could write. To a new author, this encouragement meant everything.

  Similarly, Kim Knightley deserves more credit than I can comfortably assign for working early into the morning in an effort to both improve this story and correct my many, many mistakes. (Any errors of fact or continuity are strictly his....) They're mine of course, but be assured that I'll at least try to blame him.

  And to my fearless copy editor Andrea, who by the very nature of being mentioned in this capacity, now feels eternally responsible for all of my errors… bless you. (I've followed most of her edicts… but in the end, I've broken rules and I know it.)

  And to my family, I owe everything. My wife has spent as many hours as I have on this novel – promoting, fact checking, and holding my hand. And my son Nick, who has been, and continues to be the joy of my life – may your stories be full of wonder.

  Fear not. Believe only.

  New fiction by Troy Brodsky coming in early 2014: Glare

  Chapter One

  K2

  From behind a huge pair of Gucci sunglasses, Spencer squinted down the length of the old runway, directly into the setting sun. It seemed odd to him that a runway wouldn't be flat. In fact, the thing actually humped up and down over a mile's length like rollers coming in from the ocean. He checked his wrist. One of his watches held Zulu, the other local, and both were utterly useless because they couldn't make the plane appear out of the afternoon haze. Yesterday a new cargo jet of some variety left fresh skid marks several times each hour, so many in fact, that the team's truck was now parked only a few feet from a haphazard stack of paint drums used to restore the runway's markers on a weekly basis.

  His gloves were splayed out on the truck's dash, selected fingers intentionally tucked under so that if the plane ever did arrive, it would unceremoniously be given the finger. Twice.

  He sighed and slumped back into his seat. For whatever reason, the steering wheel on this truck was on the right, which made him feel like a Limey.

  "What?" asked the man on his left.

  Spencer let his head loll over, "It was supposed be here two hours ago."

  "At least, yeah. Those glasses are fucking ridiculous. You know that right?"

  "You're jealous."

  "A little," Zane smiled at his distorted reflection. He had a pair of glasses stashed over the bill of his hat, another hanging from a lanyard around his neck, and the ones currently hiding his eyes. "They're... stylish though, I'll give you that. Maybe a little girlie, but hip."

  Spencer stared, laconic. He lifted his wrist, not even chancing another glance at the watches, "Make the plane show up and I'll get my new glasses and the rest of our shit. We're not doing anything here anyway."

  "The plane might not even show up, besides you know that you can have these if you want 'em," he lifted his pair of Wileys off of his nose, revealing the brutal tan lines around his eyes.

  "You look like some kind of raccoon," Spencer said. "Mine are lucky."

  "Have they brought us a mission?"

  They sat in silence for the next hour waiting for the C–5 and examining the angry crack in the truck's dash as the sun made its way across the sky. This was Toyota tectonics at work. Nature's forces, perversely extreme here at the slowly reforming K2, had peeled back the truck's layers in the two weeks since it had been pushed off of the plane and into the elements. These same forces would work diligently to do exactly same to the men of OD–A 555 and they knew it.

  "What's the odometer read on this thing?" Zane asked as set the b
inoculars to his eyes.

  Spencer lifted the Guccis, leaning forward to read the old–school dial, "Two hundred and two thousand."

  "Kilometers?"

  Spencer rattled the right–handed steering wheel by way of reply.

  "Don't break it. They'll make you pay for it," Zane said, then shoved a dirty folder of papers across the seat. "Here, enlighten me."

  Spencer opened the stack at random, extracted a relatively clean sheet full of text and scanned for half a minute. "Says here... that there are twenty–eight... uh..." Spencer tapped the page with his finger repeatedly, evidently counting zeros. "Two point eight billion currently residing in Afghanistan."

  "That's a lot of goats."

  "No... people. Right now. Two point eight billion," he held the sheet up in the sun for Zane to confirm.

  "So our best intel right now says that there are more folks living here than in China?"

  "Seems so," Spencer said as he recounted with his finger. "Billion."

  Zane rubbed his eyes under his glasses, pondering the significance of this blatant mis–print, "What else should I know?"

  "Well, alright... the average goat wrangler here makes like a grand a year. So, on par with us...well, me. You're all rich now, right?" he skimmed down, then swapped pages. "Alexander the great came through here, Buddhism came through here, the Huns, Hindus, Christians, Jews... evidently at one point everyone got along. Genghis Khan fucked it all up apparently. You want me to read more?"

  "Do we have anything else to do?"

  "We could do the airplane dance again," Spencer said, now using the page only as a sunshade.

  Zane pushed the paper down and pointed, "There's your plane," he lowered the binoculars and then gestured skyward.

  As one, they opened the doors, stepped out into the freezing muck, and pushed the truck into a rolling start. Zane continued to kick up mud as the truck accelerated slightly down the incline upon which it had purposefully been parked. Twenty steps later, Spencer leaped in and popped the clutch. The truck lurched violently and the engine caught.

  "This stuff is eating my boots, no lie," Zane said as the truck accelerated toward the western hangers.

  "Who knows what kind of toxic shit the Russians left here when they bailed," he scraped the mud off over the hole in the floorboard. In fact, Karshi–Khanabad had changed a great deal – there was a hospital now, a real control tower, and an orderly shanty–town of green and tan tents. Tons of equipment were flowing into Uzbekistan. Entire helicopters would roll off of the planes, crates of every conceivable size and shape – all puzzled together by loadmasters state–side who had little or no regard for the handful of men who had to cram themselves in for the long haul to the land of sand.

  Their team had arrived as cargo too, and they'd all had more than enough time to read the sparse material handed to them by their CIA liaison. The majority of the reading was of the Russian experience in Afghanistan, which wasn't terribly encouraging or enlightening, considering the fact that the Russians had banged into the country with more than a half million soldiers over the course of ten years. OD–A 555 currently had eight. Eight guys. Four more were scheduled to arrive (with real sunglasses) within twenty–four hours – give our take five days. No one knew just how many troops their big ol' lug of a country would ultimately commit to wandering the mountains here, but right now they didn't care. There were still smoke tendrils seeping from the ashes at Ground Zero when the team went into seclusion, planning, learning, speculating... and now just a week later, here they sat. Waiting. Wanting. To their knowledge, there were no other shooters on the ground in Afghanistan and they knew that they were uniquely qualified to this sort of work. That's how they'd billed themselves. It was true, of course. The founding notion of U.S. Special Forces was as simple as it was vague – to send smart men into bad places in order to change... things. They'd represent their entire country – no Congressional sub–committees, just a few guys in dirty clothes with the ability to alter foreign policy. And... no mission. Not yet.

  "Stop on the tarmac so we can get going again," Zane said as they rolled up to the hangers. "If there's a bunch of shit to carry, we can use the truck."

  They crunched to a stop in the mud and killed the engine, listening. Jet exhaust swirled up into the cab through the holes in the floor, and the wind positively howled. When they'd first arrived it seemed like the weather at K2 was simply beyond comprehension, and they'd joked that being the meteorologist here would be by far the most miserable of possible postings. Later, they would understand the terrifying accuracy of that joke, but for now they sat in their hand–me–down truck and marveled at how you couldn't fly a kid's kite at one end of Karshi, while at the other end the wind would work the rivets out of metal. It was a strange place, made even stranger by what they saw next.

  "So... what's that exactly?"

  "Well, I hope my glasses at least."

  "Just so long as we don't have to carry it," Zane said, leaning forward on the dash. He pulled off his glasses, squinting. K2, once quite literally a frontier boom-town of a base, had been abandoned for more than a decade. Now, as life returned, there was still only a skeleton crew on station. Everyone was forced to lend a helping hand, and if Zane's team wanted their gear off of the plane, they were going to have to help offload everything in front of it. They were already getting out of the truck. Spencer grabbed his gloves.

  A long, wooden crate was being extracted. Two exhausted Air Force kids had trudged out from one of the old Russian hangers to help, but the brunt of the load was evidently being handled by those who had made the flight.

  They jogged the last forty feet and got under the ends of the crate to mumbled thanks.

  "Christ, what is this?" Spencer said, feeling the weight.

  "Who knows?" one of the Air Force kids said as he returned for more gear. "Fuck man, who cares?"

  Inside the box, something growled.

  Zane and Spencer shared a look, then helped move the crate aside so that the big jet could turn around without blowing it through the hanger wall.

  "Bet your glasses are in there somewhere," Zane said. "Let's find 'em."

  Jury of Peers

  Troy L. Brodsky

  juryofpeers.us@gmail.com

  http://juryofpeers.us

  Copyright © 2013 by Troy L. Brodsky

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner (especially in book burnings or as a door stop) without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2013